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For analyzing large chunks of data, don't use the API. Use the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE), that's what it's there for. SEDE data lags real-time by 1 to 5 weeks, but that's no big problem for most statistical purposes.
For intense "Big data" analysis beyond even SEDE's capabilities, use the quarterly data dumps. (Thanks, Tim Stone, for the ...

I have found that the uniformity of having all of the methods return arrays has made writing a library much easier. Of course if it is a call (like the stats method) which always returns just one result, you don't have to expose it as a list to the API consumer. I don't have any experience with code generation and web APIs so I can't speak to that.

Well, the response has been underwhelming so far, but fortunately the powers that be decided to restore the voting tab on the profile page: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/130380/182796
So a client-side extension is no longer required.